Nothing has more visual authority than noir.
Several months ago I attended a color theory seminar at the Ann Sacks tile showroom in NYC. On the way in, I snapped this photo of a tile mural that stopped me from across the showroom floor nearly half a city block away. It was the stunning Sakura Collection Asian Wave tile in black and gold — essentially a black mural wall. How ironic that I find black so arresting when the subject of my visit was color? The Asian wave (about $77 per square foot) comes in an array of custom colors. There’s a jade version. Why bother? Nothing has the visual authority of noir.
In the past, I’ve written about black bathrooms, a black bedroom (part of a post on dark rooms), and black kitchen cabinets as well as a dazzling Parisian kitchen with black and white checkerboard tile. And I keep bumping into black – most recently in tile and wallpaper murals.
Colorists will no doubt loathe the idea of a black wall in a dining space, bad juju or whatever. But New York designer Darci Hether’s black-mural dining room (I’m guesstimating it’s wallpaper; an email query to the designer went unanswered) is as stunning as the tile wall and also makes use of naturalistic, Asian-style white flower blossom imagery.
The trend-forward Aussie wallpaper house Timorous Beasties has a black-on-black offering called Branch Out, which also could serve as a mural. The leaves and branches are naturalistic but with a definite Goth twist.
Equally Munsters is Deborah Bowness’ “Genuine Fake Bookshelf” wallpaper in the library at the Hotel du Petit Moulin in Paris (designed by Christian Lacroix). This gives me a Phantom of the Opera vibe and it also moves the style dial on the black wall mural from digital drama to virtual reality.
